Photo: FAKHRUL HASSAN / Pexels
Drishyam 3 Box Office: Mohanlal Eyes No. 2 Malayalam Crown
Mohanlal's Drishyam 3 has done something only a handful of Malayalam films ever manage: it has turned a regional thriller into a pan-India and overseas earner big enough to rewrite the record books. Twenty days after release, the Jeethu Joseph-directed sequel sits second on the all-time list of Malayalam grossers in India, and its worldwide gross has crossed the Rs 236 crore mark. The day-wise box office collection for Drishyam 3, as tracked by industry tracker Sacnilk, tells the story of a thunderous opening, a sturdy first week, and the long, thinning tail that every long-running hit eventually settles into.
What the numbers say right now
According to Sacnilk's estimates, Drishyam 3 has netted Rs 107.33 crore in India through its first 20 days, which works out to a domestic gross of Rs 124.51 crore. Add overseas takings of Rs 111.60 crore and the worldwide gross stands at Rs 236.11 crore. That overseas slice is unusually large for a Malayalam release, accounting for nearly half the global total, a sign of how deeply the Drishyam brand travels among diaspora audiences in the Gulf, Europe and North America.
The headline achievement is positional. The film now trails only Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra, which holds a domestic gross of roughly Rs 183.96 crore, and has drawn level with L2: Empuraan at the Rs 124.5 crore mark. By Sacnilk's reckoning it was barely Rs 51 lakh short of overtaking Empuraan's domestic gross, putting it firmly on the cusp of the No. 2 slot in India.
Drishyam 3 day-wise box office collection
Here is the full day-by-day breakdown of India net collections, with worldwide gross shown at the verified cumulative milestones Sacnilk has reported. The tracker publishes India net figures daily; worldwide gross is reported as a running total rather than a clean per-day split, so the gaps below are marked rather than guessed.
| Day | India Net (Rs cr) | Worldwide Gross (Rs cr) |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 (Thu) | 15.85 | — |
| Day 2 (Fri) | 11.05 | — |
| Day 3 (Sat) | 13.70 | — |
| Day 4 (Sun) | 13.85 | — |
| Day 5 (Mon) | 7.70 | — |
| Day 6 (Tue) | 6.50 | ~170 (cumulative) |
| Day 7 (Wed) | 6.65 | — |
| Day 8 (Thu) | 6.65 | — |
| Day 9 (Fri) | 4.30 | — |
| Day 10 (Sat) | 5.10 | — |
| Day 11 (Sun) | 5.35 | — |
| Day 12 (Mon) | 2.20 | — |
| Day 13 (Tue) | 1.55 | — |
| Day 14 (Wed) | 1.25 | — |
| Day 15 (Thu) | 0.93 | — |
| Day 16 (Fri) | 0.80 | — |
| Day 17 (Sat) | 1.30 | — |
| Day 18 (Sun) | 1.70 | — |
| Day 19 (Mon) | 0.50 | — |
| Day 20 (Tue) | 0.40 | 236.11 (cumulative) |
| Day 21 (Wed) | awaited | awaited |
India net figures per Sacnilk. Worldwide gross is a cumulative running total; intermediate days are not broken out separately.
A strong open, then a textbook hold
The Rs 15.85 crore opening day is one of the bigger first-day nets Malayalam cinema has seen, and crucially the film did not collapse afterwards. A Thursday release let it build into the weekend rather than peak and fade. Day 3 and Day 4 actually climbed past the Friday number, with Saturday at Rs 13.70 crore and Sunday at Rs 13.85 crore, the classic shape of a film riding positive word of mouth rather than just front-loaded hype.
The first Monday is always the honest test, and Drishyam 3 dropped to Rs 7.70 crore. That is a healthy hold, not a crash. The weekdays that followed parked comfortably in the Rs 6.5 crore range, which is how the film banked a Rs 81.95 crore opening week, per Sacnilk. For a Malayalam title, a week-one total in the eighties is rarefied air.
Where the second week cooled
The second week brought the gravity every release eventually meets. Collections settled to Rs 20.68 crore across days 8 to 14, with the second Friday slipping to Rs 4.30 crore and the second Monday halving to Rs 2.20 crore. A roughly 49% second-Monday drop is steep on paper, but by that point the film had already done the heavy lifting and was chasing milestones rather than fresh footfalls.
Week three is firmly in long-tail territory. The numbers now read in lakhs more than crores, with a small weekend bump on Day 17 and Day 18 before the weekday dip resumed. This is normal behaviour for a film three weeks deep that has already saturated its core audience; the daily adds are tiny, but they keep nudging the lifetime figure toward the records that matter.
Budget, recovery and the hit-or-flop read
The makers have not put out an official production budget, so any precise cost figure would be guesswork. What is not in doubt is the recovery. A worldwide gross north of Rs 236 crore, anchored by Rs 107 crore-plus in India net and a heavyweight overseas run, comfortably clears the bar for a franchise drama with no expensive VFX spectacle to fund. By every commercial measure available, Drishyam 3 is a clean hit, and one of the most profitable Malayalam releases of 2026.
The verdict is straightforward:
- Opening: Among the strongest in Malayalam history, with a weekend that grew rather than dipped.
- Holds: First-week retention was excellent; the second-week fall was expected, not alarming.
- Profitability: Recovered many times over relative to a non-blockbuster-scale budget.
- Legacy: Second highest-grossing Malayalam film in India, behind only Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra.
What comes next
The daily collections will keep shrinking, so the remaining suspense is about records rather than revenue. Having drawn level with Empuraan, the film's near-term target is locking down the No. 2 domestic spot outright, while the gap to Lokah's Rs 183.96 crore looks too wide to close at this stage of the run. A satellite and streaming deal, when announced, will add another layer to the overall economics that theatrical numbers alone never capture.
For now, the takeaway is simple. A thirteen-year-old franchise built on a quiet schoolteacher-turned-cable-operator outwitting the police has, in its third chapter, become a genuine box-office event. Georgekutty, it turns out, still knows how to keep an audience guessing and a cash register ringing.
